


Let him be damned

by thaumatomane (choosedailymail)



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Community: jsmn-kinkmeme, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Canon, faerie - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 15:37:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5876392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choosedailymail/pseuds/thaumatomane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During their exploration of Faerie, Strange and Norrell stumble across a man they knew many years ago. </p>
<p>The man calls himself the Champion of the Castle of the Plucked Eye and Heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let him be damned

Existing together in intimate proximity for a prolonged period meant Mr Norrell and Mr Strange’s thoughts rarely required vocalisation. It was understood by Mr Strange that when Mr Norrell stopped, mid-step, shoulders tensing the slightest degree, it was due to his uneasiness about where they had found themselves. Mr Strange raised his hand, a gesture forgoing words, meaning his companion should wait, allow him to survey their surroundings and decide if they were safe.

In their eighty-something years of perpetual drifting through Faerie, the two magicians learnt a great deal about each other. They found ways of dealing with their predicament, such as the spell they cast to illuminate their path within the Pillar of Darkness and their habit of continuing to eat when food was presented to them despite it no longer being necessary for survival. They also discovered many unthinkable landscapes together, some the size of countries and others the length of one of York’s alleyways. Every day was an adventure.

The forest in which they had found themselves, somewhere close to England they suspected, appeared very much alive. The foul stench caught in the stagnant air, however, suggested otherwise. There was snow on the ground, collected in clods around trees and in half-melted patterns across the pathway, but it was not cold. When Strange pressed the tip of his shoe into one of the clods, it crumbled, vanishing to dust as though it was merely the notion of snow. The trees too, when one looked closely, were much different to those growing from English soil. Briars wrapped every trunk, gripping the bark tight as though they wished to hold the tree still. Strange examined them closely, the bark illuminated by their magic. As he stared, the clinging tendrils bulged and split with a slow creak, the orb of a yellow eye appearing and blinking at him. All of a sudden, it was obvious to Strange that all the thorny stems and gnarled roots around them formed the slithering shape of snakes. How had he missed them in the first place?

Behind him, Norrell stood in the middle of the pathway, his long shadow flickering on the ground beside them. They noticed more serpentine eyes opening all around them, peering down from high branches and up at them from the bases of trunks, their camouflage sacrificed for the sake of their curiosity. These creatures were unfamiliar with such silent darkness, and the magical glow drifting above the visitors like fog. Norrell wrapped his arms about his chest and lowered his head, unnerved by the scrutiny of so many pairs of eyes. Abruptly, as if something had caught their attention, all the eyes turned to look in one direction, into the distance towards the end of the pathway.

“They are trying to tell us something,” Strange said, looking around and listening for other clues. The strong scent still thickened the air, like damp wood and long-soured milk. It could be dangerous to keep walking this path and it would be simple to turn back, but something compelled Strange to explore further. Without turning, he put out his hand for Norrell to take, palm down, fingers outstretched — they found this the easiest method to avoid losing each other in the Darkness. Hand in hand, they began walking further along the trail.

The pathway was more of a tunnel than a parting of trees. Branches and briars above them weaved together to form a thick canopy. In daylight, Strange assumed, without the presence of the Pillar, surely only the barest amount of light might penetrate the foliage; that would explain why the grass beneath their feet was pale and brittle. Within the leaves and vines, eyes continued to stare towards their distant sight, ignoring the trespassers.

Strange walked quickly, looking only to the end of the path. Far ahead he thought he could make out a clearing, where the trees finally parted. He felt as though he and Norrell were trapped inside one of the forest’s many veins and soon, this pathway would deliver them to its heart. Norrell sprinted along beside him, looking around in every direction. Then, he gasped, breaking his silence.

“What is that?”

Strange stopped. Turning to where Norrell faced, he saw a dark shape hanging from a branch just a few steps from the path. A gentle breeze blew through the trees, causing the shape to creak as it swung from its noose, turning slowly as if to face the glow surrounding them. The blackened visage of a corpse looked upon the magicians, its shrivelled body shrouded in a dark, fraying robe. Just as noticing one of the serpents enabled them to notice the others, the sight of the single corpse brought the many decaying bodies surrounding them to their attention. Strange felt a chill bite its way along his arms as he comprehended the countless bodies hanging from the trees. Some of the dead were naked to the elements but most were dressed in fashions long passed; a few wore clothing neither of the magicians recognised. They all appeared to be facing the same direction — toward the clearing in the distance.

“That explains the smell,” Strange said, plainly, having had quite enough surprises from this forest.

They walked on, the open space ahead drawing them closer. The ancient snow thinned the nearer they came to the clearing, for without their Darkness the sunlight was presumably bright and direct there. The pleasant scent of grass and flowers combined with the dank odour of death they were almost familiarised with now.

Stepping out of the tunnel, Strange released Norrell’s hand as they took in their new surroundings. The glade was small, barely half an acre, but decidedly prettier than the forest depths. Trees bordered the edges, a corpse hanging from almost every one. Further paths led off from the clearing, some narrow like the one they had come from, others wider than English roads — no doubt, they all led to worlds just as absurd as this. Beside one of the wider pathways stood two stone figures, too distant to make out from where they stood. In the glade's centre, a turreted stone tower stood tall, its one small window high enough to have vantage of all who passed through the domain. A brook of pastel-green water, flowing in and out through the trees, ran through the middle of the space where it was crossed by a small bridge. The water, like most things in Faerie, was probably deceptive. While it appeared calm and shallow on the surface, from the magicians' experience it was, most likely, deeper than some ocean trenches, with currents just as vigorous.

Almost simultaneously, the two magicians noticed a figure curled upon the brook’s bank, in the tower's shadow. Despite the mass of bodies around them, they had felt quite alone up until now. This person, whoever they were, was a stranger and, in Norrell's opinion no doubt, could not be trusted. Strange had never agreed with Mr Norrell on that count. He delighted in meeting fairies and often had his excitement reined in by his old tutor whenever they happened across a brugh or fort.

This figure, presumably male from his attire, was alone, hunched on the ground and incredibly still. As Strange made his way over to him, Norrell close behind, he wondered if he was perhaps just another corpse that had simply not yet been strung up. They approached with caution, not wishing to scare the poor fellow if he was indeed alive. He was dressed in faded shirtsleeves and breeches, each article threadbare and hanging from his frame as though purely for decoration rather than fitted garments. As they came closer, Strange saw the man was not still but was, in fact, shivering violently, clutching his knees like one attempting to retain warmth and save himself from an icy death.

Strange cleared his throat and the man leapt to his feet, pointing a pistol he had been cradling at the intruders. It was Henry Lascelles.

“Who are you?” Lascelles asked. His voice was as weak and broken as one not used in months. As he peered up at the floating cloud of light above the visitors, the pistol trembled in his hand. Across the muzzle of its barrel was a thin spider's web.

The magicians were speechless. It had been decades since they saw a familiar face, if Lascelles’ haggard face could be called familiar, but they were aware of the fairy trickery of showing something that was not really there. But why show them this vision? Why choose to dress the once elegant and handsome Mr Lascelles in rags, render his eyes bloodshot and mottle his once white skin with yellow and purple? Why have him appear forlorn and terrified, when the man they had known would rather die than show such weakness?

Much like the two magicians, Mr Lascelles had not aged. Despite the sallow of his skin and the tiredness in his watery eyes, he was still the same man, only gaunter. Whatever curse weighed upon Lascelles and kept him here, it was also not permitting him to age or to die.

“I am the Champion of the Castle of the Plucked Eye and Heart,” he began. “I am sworn to protect the Lady of the Castle. Do you intend to harm her?” Losing his earlier fear, Lascelles’ words were trance-like, as though he did not understand what he said but knew he must say it regardless.

“Mr Lascelles?” Strange was doubtful. If this really was him, why would he not recognise them?

Lascelles blinked several times; his bottom lip trembled as he lowered his head. The pistol wavered in his hand and his eyes unfocused.

“Who?” he asked to the ground.

Strange reached towards the pistol in the hope of pointing it away from himself and Norrell. Curling his fingers around the barrel, it was easy to slide it from Lascelles’ limp grip and pass it over his shoulder to Norrell. As he did, Norrell stood up on his toes and whispered into his ear. He told him of what had happened during his journey to Hurtfew, before he had joined Mr Strange in the fairy’s curse. It was a dim memory he could barely recall, he said, but it made sense of what they saw here. This was Mr Lascelles, for certain, and he had most likely been in this clearing for as long as they had the Darkness.

“Do you remember us?” Strange asked. Lascelles looked up at him with a start, his eyes focused with a sudden determination.

“I am Lascelles, aren’t I?” His voice shook with anger, as though just discovering someone had played a joke on him all this time. The anger subsided as quickly as it appeared, and was replaced with shock. Shaking his head, he blinked a tear from his eye, overcome. “And you...” —he looked at Strange and then at Norrell, his mouth hanging open— “You are Mr Strange and — Mr Norrell.” Norrell’s name left Lascelles’ lips with a haunted reverence, as though a mythical creature had become flesh in front of his eyes.

“That’s right,” Strange said, softly. He was reminded of how he had spoken to a soldier in Portugal, following a particularly bloody battle. When one’s nerves were in tatters, anything other than a soothing monotone could have you bolting. 

Lascelles dropped to his knees at Strange’s feet and began crying wildly, his arms hanging limp at his sides. Norrell took a step back in surprise. In mid-wail, Lascelles’ voice broke and his chest shook with the exertion of it. His sobs were long, wretched heaves of breath that sounded acutely painful. 

"I have spent an eternity here," he sobbed, "trapped, entirely alone, unable to sleep or rest." As he hunched there, shrieking like a newborn until his face was red, long strings of saliva swinging from his lips, he slumped forward, pressed his face to Strange’s waistcoat, and clung to his sleeves. 

“Please help me,” he begged, sucking in air and balling the cloth of Strange’s coat-sleeves into his fists. Never had Strange heard such distress and hopelessness in one utterance, not even from dying soldiers on Waterloo's fields. Lascelles looked up at him then, with wild, desperate eyes. It had been a long time since Strange had looked upon this man’s face. All the cruelty and malice he remembered from it, was gone — Lascelles himself was gone. All that remained was an empty shell, clinging to a scrap of sanity. 

“You have my pistol,” Lascelles whispered. He lifted a tremulous hand to his forehead and pressed the tip of his index finger between his eyebrows. “Use it. _Please_.”

“We cannot do that,” Norrell announced. He threw the pistol into the brook beside them to make sure of it. When the splash sounded, Lascelles began to laugh. Tipping his head back, he laughed, and laughed, and laughed. This manic laughter was loud enough to be heard across the whole of the clearing, and to echo along the trails and pathways that led to worlds he had no hope of reaching. The pistol materialised on the ground beside them. Lascelles was the Champion, the watchman and guard of the tower. His curse meant he could not be without his weapon just as Strange could not be without Norrell.

“Could you not,” Strange searched for the right way to say it, “do _that_ , yourself?”

“Do you not think I have tried?” Lascelles spat, still clutching the magician.

*

Lascelles _had_ tried.

Drowning was agony. His lungs had filled with the brook’s green water until he slowly suffocated, only to find himself returned to its bank a moment later, dry and breathing again.

With a makeshift noose, he had hanged himself from a strong branch. His spine snapped like brittle bark as he waited in ecstasy, for those last few seconds, his vision blackening. It was most traumatic to discover, when he stood once more at the foot of the tree —bones fused and throat open— that his body remained hanging from its branch. Each of his resurrected selves was a copy of its predecessor; after attempting to drown himself a second time, he later noticed his bloated corpse bobbing in the current upon the edge of the glade.

After shooting himself between the eyes, he reappeared instantly, the sound of the shot that killed him still echoing through the glade, his pistol loaded with gunpowder and shot once more. Lascelles was forced to kick his lifeless, bloody corpse into the brook's illusive depths, disgusted to look upon it.

Beneath the surface of the opaque water were piles of swollen bodies in various states of decay, all once housing the soul of Henry Lascelles, and all representing futile attempts to end the perpetual wakefulness that ground down his mind. Many of the decomposing corpses hanging from the trees were his also. They mocked him with their sleeping faces: death liberating in its permanence, a permanence that was not for him.

*

“We cannot help him,” Norrell said again, with some determination. If they were to end Lascelles’ misery, who knew what their fates might be. Strange tried to think of something, anything, for he did not wish to leave Mr Lascelles like this. There had to be some way of helping the poor man.

“Could we not speak with the Lady of the Castle?” He asked it more to Norrell than Lascelles.

“No!” Lascelles shrieked. He collapsed onto the grass in a fit of tremors, taking the same position he had when the magicians found him. He sobbed, violently. “You must never speak to her!” There was terror in his voice, suggesting he had tried what Mr Strange suggested and found the consequences too horrible to repeat. 

Strange peered up at the castle tower and noticed a figure moving about inside through its small window. Whoever was inside seemed to care little for the Darkness or the state of their current Champion. A candle was burning on the windowsill and Strange wondered how long it had been burning for.

“We should go,” Norrell said, touching Strange’s shoulder. He would know of Strange's distress at Lascelles’ plight, but they learnt long ago that to tarry in Faerie could be dangerous; they would only do themselves harm by staying longer. As Norrell began pushing the other magician away, Lascelles reached out and grabbed Strange’s ankle with ferocity.

“Please!” he screamed, loud enough for his plea to echo from the distant trees, just as his laughter had done. “Please don’t leave me!” He began to choke, but continued to grip as hard as he could at Strange’s shin.

“I'm sorry,” Norrell said, as if to both of them. Strange pulled himself free and Lascelles’ hand was left, clutching at the air, arm outstretched as he pushed his face into the grass. "We must leave him.”

*

Lascelles sobbed into the grass, pulling clumps up from the soil into his fists. He retched, but he did not vomit, for he had not eaten in over eighty-five years. 

For a moment, he thought there might be hope for him, that, finally, he might be permitted to leave his post and embrace the darkness his suicides allowed him to enjoy for the briefest of moments. There was nothing here to occupy his mind: no music, no conversation, no text to read nor pen or paper with which to write. He knew every blade of this grass, the pattern of every tree trunk; he had memorised the face of every corpse and every stone in the tower. 

He listened as the two men walked away, muttering to each other about whether visiting this place every now and then would be of use to a man they referred to as “Lascelles.” Curling into himself, he forgot who they were as quickly as he had remembered. 

His face was wet. From the dew?.

After a while, he felt the sun's heat on his back. Rolling over, he looked up at the sky, squinting. There were no clouds in this part of Faerie, and no birds that might fly overhead. As he stared at the bright empty space above him, he faintly recalled the sky being dark, not so long ago.

Sitting up, he picked up his pistol and laid it across his lap. Maybe today someone would challenge him, insult the Lady or try to claim this glade as their own. He would wait, and see.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a kinkmeme prompt that asked for an exploration of what might have happened to Mr Lascelles once he became the Champion of the Castle of the Plucked Eye and Heart. The prompt is here: http://jsmn-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/1613.html?thread=1685581#cmt1685581
> 
> The title is from Lucas' speech after Lascelles decides to cross the fairy bridge, despite being warned against it: "Oh, let him go!" cried Lucas, [...]. "Let him be damned if he wishes! I am sure no one could deserve it more."
> 
> Thanks a million to two very special people who helped me with this, you know who you are. I appreciate it immensely!


End file.
